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Jack Atkinson
Mike Braswell recently dealt with a white elephant in his house. Probably we all have white elephants we do not know how to handle. His was a beloved 90 year old player piano which needed many repairs. This was to be a project for retirement, but his son needed more room and a new bedroom was to be constructed in the space now occupied by the player piano. With previous additions to the house there was no way to get the piano out without taking drastic action. A sledge hammer and a saw made the piano into a pile of rubble in under an hour. The loss of the white elephant means that Mike will have to find a new retirement project. A white elephant is defined as either a costly possession requiring so much upkeep that it becomes a burden or just something no longer wanted by its owner (hence so many "white elephant sales"). For years I collected antique textiles (quilts and coverlets). A museum closed and I acquired a pre-Civil War loom. I had visions of a loom room, perhaps even learning how my ancestors wove blankets and cloth. The loom was in a hundred pieces and it was really quite ancient. After paying for it I moved it once, then twice and then for about the 10th time it came to its final resting place. After staying for a long time in a building a relative of mine considered it abandoned and used the large winding tube for a yard ornament. Old Miss Lucy McWorters would be amazed at what happened to her prized loom. I no longer had to worry about that white elephant. Mike and I are both sad about these occurrences, but these things are no longer burdens. One of the most interesting elephants is the colorless variety. Have you ever seen the elephant in the room that no one talks about? Usually this means there is some person or deed or situation about which everyone knows but dares not speak. We usually just stumble around that invisible elephant; problems are not solved this way. What about grey elephants? These are the real thing. We are only now learning about these large creatures. One of the most delightful sights I have witnessed was a baby elephant learning to maneuver his trunk. How exciting it was to watch this on the African plain. Elephants have good sized brains and a range of emotions and behaviors that amaze scientists. Arecent finding about elephants in South Africa shows how like people they are. Twenty years ago a number of elephants were taken away from parents and put in a game park. Now without proper parental teaching they are crushing rhinos just for the fun of it something their parent elephants would not have allowed! Normally they are not mean. They are very sensitive and emotional. Dr. Joyce Poole has written extensively about this. Her father was my Peace Corps Director in Kenya and later he was head of the African Wildlife Foundation. His daughter is perhaps the leading expert in elephant conservation and study. She found elephants who truly grieve. One mother who had a stillborn baby spent hours trying to revive it and then finally slumped, cried and went through the grieving process we humans face before she could move on. Elephants regularly stop at the site of where another elephant they knew died. They pause and then move on. In Coming of Age with Elephants she details more about elephant behavior. The recent study by some Emory researchers at the Bronx Zoo showed that elephants are in the very small group of species having a sense of self-awareness. Humans, most of the great apes, dolphins and now elephants seem to possess this awareness. The study put elephants in front of large mirrors. By painting a mark on an elephant scientists can tell when the elephant decided to touch that mark while looking in the mirror that the elephant knows it is his mark that he is checking out. An elephant named Happy was the one who confirmed this magic touch. An elephant by any color is something that can not be missed. I like the grey ones the best.--Jack Atkinson is our regular guest columnist and a resident of Garfield.
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